Posts by phil mcracken

If this is a sign of things to come...

...I won't be buying any more Apple kit.

I bought a 15" Macbook Pro last year for music production and DJ use. I'd researched the serviceability (if there is such a word) of my potential purchase before committing to it, as I've been caught out previously by laptops with limited or no capability for DIY fixes.

It's not just about repairing the unit when it goes wrong - it's also about being able to customise it and increase its functionality as you need. With the way Apple have gone about the new model, you're locked into them for repairs and locked into them for upgrades as well. Most kit nowadays seems to have deliberate obsolescence built in - to me this is unforgivable when you should be able to extend the computers life with some relatively easy and simple upgrades.

At the online checkout, I had the option of paying an extra £75 to get 8GB of RAM, or £75 to get a 750GB HDD instead of the standard 500GB and decided to decline both (even last year you could get 8GB for £40 and a 1TB for £60). I've followed the fixit guide to upgrade the HDD and will probably do the same for the RAM when it starts to slouch. Ten standard screws later, the entire bottom of the MAC lifts off and I can get at the RAM, the battery and the HDD (plus a lot of the other components) without any problems. Looking at this years equivalent model that no longer seems a viable option.

I'm not interested in buying the latest flashiest Mac when my current one develops a fault or gets too slow for my liking - I want to be able to upgrade it and increase its ability as required. I got six years of trouble-free service out of my HP laptop and it's still going strong. Is it wrong to want the same from my mac, especially given how much I've paid for it?

Assuming you don't need to link them together by fibre...

Also worth a look are the HP A5800 series switches, they are 10GB capable and their IRF feature makes it easy to group multiple switches together as one logical unit. If you shop around, you can get them for fairly close to the price of the D-Link units. I've used these in several 10G deployments now and I've been pretty impressed with them.

Like the D-links, their CLI is disturbingly similar to IOS so is fairly easy to get your head around.

Re: NAS

I've found from personal experience that the later version of the microserver (N40L) does support 16GB of RAM. I used 2 sticks of Kingston Blu DDR3 1600 that I borrowed from my main machine and it seemed to boot up fine. Not so sure about whether the earlier version (N36L) of this server will support it though.

thats all well and good....

Not as easy as you might think, unless the security is really appalling...

I don't know what steps the Mosman Council have taken to secure their site, but as a standard measure, I only run MySQL/PostgreSQL on localhost, meaning anything wishing to connect to it must run from the same box, I change the user permissions of each dbuser to only allow them to perform the required actions rather than the full list of actions they can carry out, I give them a randomized name and password to stop them from being guessed, and I regularly check my CMS and other software for security updates. You wouldn't be able to get direct access to one of my SQL databases from an external box unless you managed some form of SQL injection, and even then you wouldn't be able to grab the full site and all its files, just the DB and its content.

In order to pull off a complete sitedump, they'd need FTP details, and I suspect that the database username and password is probably the same as the FTP and CMS logon as people don't like lots of different passwords. Sounds to me like some sort of PHP/SQL exploit which revealed the admin logon. Facepalm ;)

Not so much hacking skill as extremely lax security. The choice of target still puzzles me though, not exactly cia.gov is it?

difficult to track down?

they will be fined...

...usually these contracts have automatic penalties incurred for missing deadlines, deliverables, or levels of service. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a termination clause as well, hence the DWP pulling the plug...

In space...

It's not deliberate ignorance....

.... it's cynicism, possibly justified given the long list of American politicians who have already come out of the woodwork to denounce Wikileaks using less than civilized language, and the credibility of the trial of detainees at "gitmo" among other things.

I hear that anonymous is a pretty cool guy...

FAIL.

Looks like internet security isn't their strong point. The anon's ddosing the site found that when it came back up, it left the root directory exposed with an archived copy of all of their emails and logon details in plain text form, plus client contact details and even credit card details.

I seriously can't see the firm surviving this - the channers have hit the jackpot.

sitting on the fence...

I recently inherited a vbulletin forum from an admin who no longer was interested in running it. We had to pay for a licence to get the forum upgraded from 2.6.9 (hideously old) to 3.8.4 (the current version). I even had to downgrade a new server to php4/mysql4 to get the upgrade process to work.

I've been really impressed with how well written vB is in it's current form and have found the mods useful. I'm not sure I can say the same with vB4 (even though people keep jumping up and down shouting "it's only a beta!". Why are they in such a rush to roll out a beta? I wouldn't risk it, especially when they rely on their forum system on their site for support & billing, as well as comments and mods.

This whole vB4 release and sales pitch stinks of desperation and/or poor planning. Surely it would make more sense to get it working and to the point where it was fully ready and then release/demo it? Or even just to follow the old method of beta testing that they used on vb3. Instead they roll out a dog, and to pretend that it's suffering issues due to the "sheer amount of people viewing the new system". Bullshit. If the old system can handle 600-700 users viewing a board at once, why can't the new one?

And then of course there's the way they've handled the feedback - banning users who have paid for their licences and revoking their access to the support. These users aren't trolls - some of these people are the most vocal supporters of vB in it's current form.

I'm going to watch very carefully what happens over the next few months with this new software and pricing. If I don't like what I see, I'm off. I suspect I won't be alone.